Product Description

Along with MySQL's popularity has come a flood of questions about solving specific problems, and that's where this Cookbook is essential. Designed as a handy resource when you need quick solutions or techniques, the book offers dozens of short, focused pieces of code and hundreds of worked-out examples for programmers of all levels who don't have the time (or expertise) to solve MySQL problems from scratch. The new edition covers MySQL 5.0 and its powerful new features, as well as the older but still widespread MySQL 4.1. One major emphasis of this book is how to use SQL to formulate queries for particular kinds of questions, using the mysql client program included in MySQL distributions. The other major emphasis is how to write programs that interact with the MySQL server through an API. You'll find plenty of examples using several language APIs in multiple scenarios and situations, including the use of Ruby to retrieve and format data. There are also many new examples for using Perl, PHP, Python, and Java as well. Other recipes in the book teach you to: access data from multiple tables at the same time; use SQL to select, sort, and summarize rows; find matches or mismatches between rows in two tables; determine intervals between dates or times, including age calculations; store images into MySQL and retrieve them for display in web pages; get LOAD DATA to read your data files properly or find which values in the file are invalid; use strict mode to prevent entry of bad data into your database; copy a table or a database to another server; generate sequence numbers to use as unique row identifiers; create database events that execute according to a schedule; and a lot more. "MySQL Cookbook" doesn't attempt to develop full-fledged, complex applications. Instead, it's intended to assist you in developing applications yourself by helping you get past problems that have you stumped.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #83753 in Books
• Published on: 2006-11-27
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 948 pages

Review
"...MySQL Cookbook tells you exactly how to solve literally hundreds of problems that you are likely to encounter in getting a MySQL database solution up and running." - Computer Trade Shopper, November 2003

From the Publisher
MySQL Cookbook provides a unique problem-and-solution format that offers practical examples for everyday programming dilemmas. For every problem addressed in the book, there's a worked-out solution or "recipe"--short, focused pieces of code that you can insert directly into your applications. More than a collection of cut-and-paste code, this book explanation how and why the code works, so you can learn to adapt the techniques to similar situations.

About the Author
Paul DuBois was one of the first contributors to the online MySQL Reference Manual, a renowned documentation project that supported MySQL administrators and database developers in the first few years of MySQL's existence in the late 1990's. Paul went on to write more than six books on MySQL, including the first edition of "MySQL Cookbook". He is also the author of "Using csh & tcsh" and "Software Portability with imake", both by O'Reilly.

Customer Reviews

Does Exactly What It Says On The Tin
A few pages past the table of contents, I had solved two issues that had been bugging me since my last install. It was pretty minor stuff, but could I as heck find the answers online. It just shows what research, presentation, and quality control can achieve. So, another score for books over bytes.

The layout is uncluttered, and you can usually get the gist without reading through pages of preamble and exposition. The examples are practical and adaptable (no long and complex routines found on some sites) so they can almost be cut and pasted into your own applications. As your applications develop, there's always something else you can add.

The only downside is that it's a book - a few mods to MySQL and you might have to fork out for the next revision. Still, I should have got my money's worth by then.

Teaches you SQL
Explains by example so many common queries you'll be able to solve a wide variety of problems instantly. SQL is a deceptively deep language and getting to grips with this small army of queries gives you the basics to build on.

Easy reading and sensible examples. Some omissions (insert) but it's not the complex stuff - that part is really taught well.